Malcolm Raeburn Read

Current positions

Senior Lecturer in Media Performance

Biography

I joined the University in 1999. For more than twenty-five years prior to that I was a freelance tutor, writer, director, singer and actor.

I began my career as an actor/teacher with Humberside Theatre-In-Education, then becoming a performer/deviser in political and community theatre with Broadside Mobile Workers' Theatre, Red Ladder Theatre and Pirate Jenny.

My writing for theatre includes commissions for Dr Fosters Theatre, M6 Theatre Company; Interplay Community Theatre. I have written libretti for music by Professor Christopher Fox, as well as lyrics for the award-winning Lip Service Theatre Company and my band, Agony Column, with whom I released three singles in the 1980s.

Performance work includes repertory theatre, theatre-in-education, community theatre, street theatre and improvised comedy. I have played many television roles since Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel In The Crown in the 1980s up to the present day, and have been heard in many featured roles in BBC Radio Drama.

I was a founder member of the comedy improvisation troupe Comedy Express. My interest in comedy led to taking a lead role in creating the Comedy Writing and Performance degree.

I am Admissions Lead for Media and Performance, having previously been Programme Leader. As a former Director of Admissions for the School and Admissions Coordinator for Performance I continue to take an active interest in marketing and recruitment.

As Chair of the Actors Centre North till 2012 and as a panel member of the Television Workshop Salford I have been involved in initiatives to develop actor training in the region.

I also coordinate the graduating students' Performers' Showcase, which has increasingly raised the University's profile in the arts and entertainment industries as a source of outstanding talent. I am committed to bringing students in contact with the industry which they aspire to join, not only through Showcase, but also finding opportunities for students to appear in radio, video and TV recordings and bringing in industry professionals to give talks and hold master classes.